<p>Today I was squiring my sister and her daughter around BU for a visit and we happened to have a tour guide who mentioned she had been accepted by Harvard but chose BU because she liked its atmosphere better (it may also have served her needs better for the program she wanted to pursue). My niece expressed considerable support for this somewhat iconoclastic decision. I have also heard anti-prestige mutterings from a certain cousin of my niece. Just wondering how much of a reaction might be building out there against the whole idea of prestige, especially among students who have a good chance of being admitted to the so-called “prestigious” schools.</p>
<p>The quest for prestige is higher than ever, hence rising applications. My guess is that she was admitted to Harvard and BU and took the money and went to BU.</p>
<p>Not to be cynical but we never really know for sure where anyone was accepted except for the school they are enrolled in!</p>
<p>The bottom line is what gardener mentions.</p>
<p>The number of people who were “admitted to Harvard but chose to go elsewhere” goes up every year. It’s usually expressed as a form of personal virtue. </p>
<p>But the reality is that Harvard’s admission and enrollment figures are surprisingly stable. The number of applicants keeps going up, but the number accepted stays pretty stable around 2100 and the number who enroll stays around 1660.</p>
<p>True enough about Harvard but with BU in particular their application numbers keep going up every year. In fact, more students applied to BU last year than any of the Ivy league schools. For the 2004 cycle they received 28,240 applications.</p>
<p>However, I do not think there is an anti-prestige movement. In fact, I think it is quite the opposite. More and more students chasing the limited number of seats available. This is born out in the numbers that Coureur cites, the yield rate at Harvard and the other Ivy league schools.</p>
<p>I agree the “pro-prestige rate” is going up. However, with the cost of college being so high, middle class families do decide to go to colleges with better financial aid packages and with merit scholarships. Wash. U. in St. Louis has been able to lure kids from Ivies through Merit Awards, and many students opt for State schools especially if they plan to go to graduate school anyway. In another case I know one young woman who really did turn down a top Ivy for a free ride to Fordham. She has graduated and is doing phenomenally well (a physics major). Yes, Ivies give lots of scholarships, but for a middle class family who doesn’t qualify for a lot of scholarship money, merit awards and good state schools (Michigan, Wisconsin, California) may win out especially for studnets looking at, say, high med school costs in their future.</p>
<p>well think about it…</p>
<p>In a democracy, do we really want to have a system where only the chosen few (those who have graduated from ivies ) are the “golden boys/girls” of the country and are the only ones pre-destined for absolute success.</p>
<p>Also, since it has been noted in several recent articles that most of the top CEO’s, etc did NOT graduate from Ivies, the importance of such distinction is becoming diminished.</p>
<p>I do think that prestige is greatly overrated as a reason to choose to attend a school, but rising app numbers at the elite schools suggest plenty of people are still chasing a name-brand education.</p>
<p>If there is an anti-prestige segment, it may have its roots in the insane competition to get admitted to the most selective schools and the sometimes random nature of acceptances. Some students may decline to play the game, and others may apply but not invest much emotion in the process.</p>
<p>I suspect there is also the powerful sociological reality of a global obsession with “branding” at work. If all schools suddenly had nonsense syllables as names, there would still be cohorts of quality and type but much less of the current obsession of social comparison. Unfortunately, the schools can’t resist or avoid joining in the game and it is great media-hype…</p>
<p>I can’t deny the statistics. But I can’t help but wonder whether a degree from Harvard or its ilk opens any more doors these days than a degree from traditionally less prestigious colleges like B.U. I wonder if, as the baby boomers get subducted into retirement, and the demographics of the country change, and college costs become ever more stratospheric, there won’t be a corresponding change in the face of power in this country, with grads from the Ivies and top LACs no longer the top dogs in every field. In my own backyard I’m seeing this reaction against the whole idea of prestige and so I think it must be happening elsewhere, probably among the kids who are most immune to social pressure. But of course, they aren’t the ones who are likely to be hanging out on College Confidential, ready to support my idle speculation.</p>
<p>I would say that there is an anti-prestige movement among some students. We’re tired of everyone holding us up to such high standards. I was accepted to two schools in the top 10, but decided to go elsewhere (Carnegie Mellon…still top 25 or so I’ve been told) because I didn’t want to go to school with top 10 kinds of kids, and I didn’t want everyone oohing if I mentioned where I go to school. My parents were a little upset (and my mom still mentions to everyone that I was accepted to X and Y), and nobody has any idea where I go to school when I mention it, but I’m much happier here with more low-key kids, and I don’t get a reputation as a spoiled, privledged brat (even though I’m putting myself through school).</p>
<p>As far as financial aid, CMU matched a better school’s offer.</p>
<p>Pesto,</p>
<p>You already see that today. In the more technical fields like engineering there is no belief that an Ivy league education is any better than what you would get from many other schools. Take a look at the rankings of the engineering schools, there are 7 schools before the first Ivy is listed (Cornell). Tied at 41st on that list are Arizona State, Dartmouth, Lehigh, Michigan State, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Washington University and Yale.</p>
<p>It is interesting to note that the Ivy league schools, who traditionally have been against professional schools for undergraduate education, are expanding their engineering schools. Specifically, Harvard and Princeton who are currently 31 and 12 on the US News lists.</p>
<p>I think some of the kids who applied ED this year form my son’s school were thinking along these lines. Many of the boys seemed to choose schools that were a very good fit for various reasons, and then applied early. They may have been able to get into schools with more “prestige” but went for fit and early closure. CMUGals attitude may be the exception, but I have seen it more than I would expect. They seem happy with their choices and are enjoying these last months of their senior year.</p>
<p>Thanks for speaking up, CMUGal. Has CMU worked out for you? Do you feel you missed out on anything (other than your parents’ approval) by not going to college X or Y?</p>
<p>If not a full-fledged movement, then, perhaps we are seeing the first rising of a wave that may become more and more noticeable in the next few admissions cycles.</p>
<p>I’ve noticed an anti-prestige attitude as well, but I think it is a reaction to an extremely strong and widespread pro-prestige attitude. Many of the anti-prestige students think it’s ridiculous to chase a dream of attending an Ivy/Ivy-substitute just because of the name or to impress others. Other anti-prestige students are doing a variation of what Roger_Dooley said: an anti-pretige sentiment allows students applying to such prestigious schools to have some kind of emotional detachment in case they do not get in.</p>
<p>I think the anti-prestige thing is more apparent than real. You’ll know that anti-prestige is real when you start to see the yields go down at the top schools. But so far that’s not the case.</p>
<p>I agree that prestige is overrated. However, I know of an individual who got into both Dartmouth and Harvard (and every place else she applied) who wants to be a doctor. She was told by a faculty member who has an endowed chair at Harvard Medical School to go to Harvard because even if she has only half a brain she can write her ticket to any med school in the country.</p>
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<p>And it could be that kids now know MANY successful people (parents, relatives, others) who never went to a big name college. Over and over again we learn that the earnings of people from big names are not higher (or justifiably higher) then those from local U of State.</p>
<p>I always thought it was weird that two of my sis-in-laws insisted on going to “name” schools and racked up huge student loans and have careers in teaching and accounting. Not that there is ANYTHING wrong with those careers (I am a former teacher), but to insist on a “name school” and have to pay back all that money seems a bit odd and unnecessary to me. They could have gotten fine educations at one of their state universities for practically free.</p>
<p>I would never go to a school just because of its prestige… I got into University of Chicago and Barnard but my first choice during the application process was NYU… University of Chicago was around 5th on my list and Brown University was 3rd. Atmosphere and specific programs are far more important. </p>
<p>If I chose a school just because of the impressiveness of its bumper sticker, I would have probably been much more unhappy with my choice</p>